My escapade into loving myself...

My name is Nichol Garcia, im a 21yr old latina mother of a beautiful daughter. My family consists of different types of people, all together we are all mexican-american! My parents never taught my siblings and i while growing up our native language-spanish! Of course they would speak it around us and that is ONLY if they had to, so we pretty much were raised on understanding just "un poquito" of this beautiful language. I mostly grew up on the good side of town, where most of the hispanics, mexicans, latinos, chicanos(we have many names lol) go to two of the best schools, we are close to the malls and shopping centers, we have less to worry about, meaning "drive-bys", homicides, burgularys and what not. The SOUTHSIDE in our city is the most decent part of town. Im not saying that we don t face these issues on the south at all, because every now and then we do, but it doesn t happen as often as it does in other parts of the city. My high school was overpopulated with anglo students coming in first, second hispanics/latinos, thirdly african-american descent, and last is all other races combined. So most of the latinas that i knew, we all wanted to wear the name brands that the white girls would wear, we wanted to look like them in a sense. We were jealous because they had all the clothes, jewelry, shoes, purses, and unlimited allowances, or so we would hear while getting dressed in the locker room lol. I know that these anglo teenage girls were very much envied, by me that is. I started to feel ashamed because i wasn t white, and i didn t even know my own language! I didn t have the lavish clothes, my own vehicle to drive to school in, my parents were not making enough money to be able to live in a beautiful, big house! This is what they had, and i wanted all of it! And talking about money, I almost never got an allowance and when i did, it was usually $5.00! What was i gonna buy with $5 bucks, and at the mall??? The environment that i grew up in all my life wasn t very loving and full of affection, i had a step-father that i did not get along with, i was emotionally abused by him, sometimes even my own flesh and blood, my mother! I was the outkast of the "family", left out when called to the dinner table, alway s kept inside the house so i can wash dishes, and clean house at the age of 10! Slowly but surely, before i knew it i made it to my "resort". I was 15yrs old when i was "severly depressed" or thats what my pychiatrist called it. My "resort" wasn t filled with people walking around claiming to see things and eyeballing you for no apparent reason, well there were a couple, but it wasn t a "nut house". It was decent, pretty much a vacation from anyone and everything around you that caused you to be depressed and drive you to want to kill yourself. I would cut myself with anything that i could find laying around me at the time that i usually would be crying, and feeling at my wits end to just end my own life, because no one cared anyway, right?! So as soon as i made it seem that i was "well" enough to be released, i went back to being depressed, and having the same feelings i had all over again.I felt i had no one to talk to, i surely didn t want to live with my parent s anymore or i hadn t wanted to live with them since i was 13yrs old, the first time i ran away with the "love of my life". So when i fell in love again when i was 18yrs old, i moved in with my b/f. I had always wanted a baby of my own, so i decided that this time i WAS going to get pregnant, in other attempts i had not suceeded. My dream that i have had since i had been with my very first love at 13yrs old was to get married and have babies. The thing was though, that i didn t realize that those babies i intended on having would grow up to become children, teenagers, and later on adults. So i soon found out i was pregnant with a daughter, but that wasn t till after i had moved back in with my forgiving parents. It turned out that my b/f wasn t the "one" for me, so i left him when i was a month and a half pregnant with our child. As soon as i gave birth to this magnificent creature that i had been developing thoughts of abortion throughout my pregnancy for, i fell in love. I named her Kaitlyn Taylor, what a name, huh?! Yea, well i was still ashamed of my being latina, so i chose the most anglo name any white parents could give their daughter! I didn t want my daughter or future children to have any kind of mexican origin in their names whatsoever! They were going to conform to Americas way of thinking on how hispanic men, women, teenagers, and children should look like, think, and all together turn out and be as soon as that human being is out of a mothers womb. I thought that it was okay to try to be something else other than yourself, turns out i was wrong. Now i live with regret for giving my more than just latina daughter a white persons name! She is one-hundred percent "mexicana", and i just didn t care about a name, i mean who does? Seems i found out that everyone does. Now everyday i pray that she doesn t get made fun of in school, when she starts going to school, for her not so hispanic name. I have learned to accept myself for who i am, i have learned to love my culture, my heritage, and everythig that involves any kind of person with some kind of mexican, latin, spanish blood running through their veins. I can honestly say that i love being latina! I love our "comida" (food), our music may it be tejano, reggeaton, merengue, latin rock, cumbias etc...our festive holidays like Cinco de Mayo and Dia De Los Muertos, and the "hobbys" that alot of latinos have picked up on such as lowrider car shows, tattooing, tagging "art", and the list goes on. I wish i can just turn back time and wish i would have been a proud latina back then, the way i am today. Right now i am trying to teach my daughter, even though she is only 2yrs old, how to count her numbers in spanish, say phrases like hello, and goodbye in spanish and let her know as she is growing up that it s okay to be hispanic and she has nothing to be ashamed of or about. Everyone in America is different in their own way, we all come from different cultures and backgrounds, but yet we all have one thing in common-we are all Americans and that should count for something! I believe that hispanic people should be able to speak their native tongues-spanish if they want to, that we should be able to be ourselves, and not have to worry about us not being anglo, so to speak. So if i decide i want another baby, if and when i do, im going to give him or her a decent name, a name that will have some kind of spanish origin in it one way or another. So all in all i love being of mexican background, i am distilling everything i know of my beautiful culture into my life daily and i am not going to ever be ashamed, ever again of who this beautiful person is inside and out. I am very different in my way of thinking now a days, as before i was very naive, and no one ever told me up until i was old enough to understand, that i can t be ashamed to be who i am! I learned that i have to have pride in myself and for "our" people because we are taking over this country, and we are more powerful and successful today, than we have ever been in years since this country was first founded! I am a proud latina that gives other latinas the strength to be themselves and never feel shame and unworthiness again.